MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Released by Columbia Pictures Corp. in late 1939, this 126-minute film (screenplay by Sidney Buchman) was directed by Frank Capra, then at the height of his renown. Leading players were James Stewart as the eponymous hero, and Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, and Edward Arnold. The film is a classic example of "Capra corn"—the director's populist paen to an America in which "the little people" triumph.

Stewart portrays Jefferson Smith, a naïve but dedicated young man who heads the Boy Rangers in his state and is appointed to the unexpired term of a deceased U.S. senator. In Washington he is assigned a savvy, cynical secretary (well-played by Arthur), who initially mocks Smith's enthusiastic idealism but is won over. Smith's naïveté results in a cynical press corps drubbing him cruelly. His idol, the state's senior senator (Rains), worked with Smith's murdered father for many a worthy but lost cause, now is secretly in cahoots with the state's corrupt boss (Arnold).

Attempting to escape the "honorary stooge" label pinned on him by the press corps, Smith introduces a bill that would create a national Boys Ranger camp, at a site that would interfere with the boss's pocket-lining real estate deal. Smith rebuffs attempts to have the camp placed elsewhere. The senior senator is part of the boss's maneuver to frame Smith and get him expelled from the Senate. Smith undertakes a filibuster in hopes of arousing public opinion in his state, but the boss manages to keep the truth about his graft from the state's citizens. After twenty-four hours of his one-man filibuster, Smith collapses on the Senate floor. His former idol's conscience having been revived by the filibuster, the senior senator attempts suicide, confessing that everything Smith had said about corruption and graft in the state is true. It is a victory for Smith and what he stands for.

The film garnered very positive reviews, winning eleven Oscar nominations, and has since been judged "among the foremost 'message' films of 1930s Hollywood." But there was a darker side to its contemporary reception. The American media praised the film, but the Washington press corps took umbrage at how it was presented, and various senators attacked the film, among them Alben Barkley (D-KY), who called its portrayal of the Senate "silly and stupid," and James Byrnes (D-SC), who labeled it "outrageous."

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

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